[Kim Seong-kon] K-zombies are ubiquitous in Korea

  In recent times, Korean zombie movies have enchanted foreign viewers. For example, “Train to Busan,” which premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, enthralled international audiences as one of the finest zombie films ever produced. Its sequel, “Peninsula,” garnered comparable acclaim, as did the Netflix original series “Kingdom.” It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the Los Angeles Times headlined a recent article, “Zombies are everywhere in

March 17, 2021

[Kevin Pham, Robert E. Moffit] The end of the pandemic is in sight

When it comes to COVID-19 policy, President Joe Biden has clearly opted for a go-slow approach. If we “follow the science,” though, it’s apparent that he’s being too cautious. In his first prime-time address in office, he addressed the state of the COVID-19 pandemic in America. He expressed hope that, by Independence Day, family and friends could gather once again. But he immediately hedged, adding that this “doesn’t mean large events with lots of people toge

March 16, 2021

[Doyle McManus] Biden’s foreign policy neither Trump’s nor Obama’s

We’re starting to see the outlines of President Joe Biden’s foreign policy, and you won’t be shocked to hear that it’s looking very different from President Donald Trump’s. But here’s something that may surprise you: Biden’s foreign policy also differs in significant ways from President Barack Obama’s. Trump declared his goal was “America First,” which often meant trashing allies and starting trade wars. It was a noisy way to interact

March 16, 2021

[Shang-Jin Wei] Why should Biden ditch Trump’s China tariffs?

Over the course of his presidency, Donald Trump raised US tariffs on imports from China several times, from an average of about 3 percent when he took office in January 2017 to over 20 percent by the end of 2019. As a result, the current average US tariff on Chinese goods is essentially at the same level that the United States imposed on the rest of the world in the early 1930s under the Smoot-Hawley Act, a protectionist measure that many economists blame for the severity of the Great Depression

March 15, 2021

[Ana Palacio] The Western Sahara time bomb

On Feb. 27, the Polisario Front marked the 45th anniversary of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which it declared in 1976 to be the rightful government of the territory of Western Sahara. During the celebration -- which took place in the refugee camps of Tindouf, in the Algerian desert, where the seat of the SADR government is located -- the Polisario decried the continuing political impasse over the territory, which Morocco also claims. The deadlock must be broken – and the European

March 15, 2021

[Digital Simplicity] Spotify’s deal with Kakao offers a positive signal

When Spotify made a debut in South Korea last month, a number of Korean users were disappointed because the service went online without the crucial library of Korean songs. The debacle stemmed from the fight between Kakao Entertainment, which controls about 40 percent of the domestic music service market, and Spotify, the worlds’ biggest streaming music provider. Speculation mounted over why they failed to reach a deal. One theory is that Kakao Entertainment, which runs the country&rsqu

March 13, 2021

[Robert J. Fouser] Gender-neutral approach to fertility rate

Since the rush to develop began in the 1960s, the South Korean government has paid attention to the fertility rate. In the 1960s and 1970s, the rate was too high, and the government focused its efforts on birth control. The rate fell steadily, dropping below 2.1 children per woman for the first time in 1983. According to the UN Population Division, a total fertility rate (TFR) level of about 2.1 is enough to sustain population levels, excluding immigration and emigration. After holding in a nar

March 12, 2021

[Bennett Ramberg] Is nuclear peace with North Korea possible?

North Korea’s recent public displays of new intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles have raised fresh concerns about the risks the regime in Pyongyang poses to the US mainland. As President Joe Biden’s administration reviews US policy toward the DPRK over the past four years and draws what lessons it can from Donald Trump’s nuclear summitry with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, it should consider a new arms-control approach. The failure of Trump’s effo

March 12, 2021

[Kim Myong-sik] Popular former prosecution chief stirs Korean politics

Watching the worsening turmoil in Myanmar, where the death toll from the brutal police control rises day by day, South Koreans see flashbacks of their own streets four decades ago. Pro-democracy demonstrators were killed by the hundreds in the rebellious city of Gwangju and in the capital, Seoul, until the military finally withdrew from politics in the 1980s. Democratic governance has developed, with rightist and leftist groups exchanging power almost regularly. No blood was spilled on the pav

March 11, 2021

[Noah Smith] COVID-19 economy before Zoom and Amazon

Economists concerned about slowing productivity have spent the past decade hotly debating the value of free digital services such as Google’s web search and Amazon’s online store. But those online services have proven their worth during the pandemic. And COVID-19 may ultimately push our society to learn new ways of using digital technologies that accelerate productivity growth. Over the past year I’ve been occasionally bombarded with tweets casting doubt on the value of softw

March 11, 2021

[Peter Singer] When vaccination is a ‘crime’

On Dec. 29 last year, Hasan Gokal, the medical director of the COVID-19 response team in Harris County, Texas (which includes Houston, the fourth-largest city in the United States by population), was supervising the administration of the Moderna vaccine, mostly to emergency workers. The vaccine comes in vials containing 11 doses. A vial, once opened, expires in six hours and unused vaccine must then be thrown away. On that December day, a patient arrived just before closing time, so a nurse had

March 10, 2021

[Kim Seong-kon] Absurdity and irrationality in our society

South Korea is undoubtedly one of the most convenient places to live in today’s world. You can do practically anything electronically, including lock your door, so no one carries jingling metal keys in Korea. Moreover, you can obtain government documents online and even renew your driver’s license in a few minutes. At the same time, however, many bureaucracies make life incredibly inconvenient. According to recent newspaper reports, foreigners cannot buy Korean merchandise online b

March 10, 2021

[Mihir Sharma] US vaccine hoarding out of norm

Those Americans who cheered President Joe Biden’s announcement this week that the US would have enough vaccines to inoculate every citizen by the end of July might want to note the cold silence with which the rest of the world greeted the news. Biden’s triumphalism was more than a little grating, considering that the US, alongside most other rich countries, has essentially chosen to corner the market on shots that are desperately needed elsewhere. Just this Monday, the Mexican presi

March 9, 2021

[J. Bradford DeLong] What are the new inflation hawks thinking?

Back in 1992, Lawrence H. Summers, then the chief economist at the World Bank, and I warned that pushing the US Federal Reserve’s annual inflation target down from 4 percent to 2 percent risked causing big problems. Not only was the 4 percent target not producing any discontent, but a 2 percent target would increase the risk of the Fed’s interest-rate policy hitting the zero lower bound. Our objections went unheeded. Fed Chair Alan Greenspan reduced the inflation target to 2 percent

March 9, 2021

[Sohn Woo-hyun] ROK-US alliance marred at Taegukgi Park

In the former US Army compound at Yongsan in central Seoul, there is a park named after the South Korean flag, Taegukgi. In this park, adorned by Mugunghwa, the national flower of South Korea, 50 Taegukgi are fluttering around the clock.　 According to the information bulletin, the park was created in 1998 to “revive the national spirit and arouse patriotism.” It was a commendable undertaking at a time when core values are often challenged.　 What raises eyebrows, however, is the in

March 8, 2021

[Jwa Sung Hee] Saemaul Undong, a controlled economic development experiment, merits a nobel prize

As Korea has developed into the 10th-largest economy in the world, many in Korea now wonder when the country will win a Nobel Prize in the five scholarly categories. Frustrated, Korea’s basic science community even voices a call for the establishment of a dedicated incubator program to support promising scientists and their research. And yet, few dare to entertain, indeed argue for, the notion that the “Saemaul Undong” (literally translated, “New Village Movement”),

March 8, 2021

[Trudy Rubin] An admiral and a novelist want you to imagine a nuclear war with China

How do nations sleepwalk into war? Often through lack of imagination. That is the thesis that impelled Adm. James Stavridis, a former NATO supreme commander, and Elliot Ackerman, a prominent fiction writer and decorated Marine veteran, to write “2034: A Novel of the Next World War.” The new novel envisions how the United States and China could blunder into a nuclear conflict, propelled by Chinese nationalism, American hubris, and a US failure to grasp the extent of Chinese advances

March 8, 2021

[Serendipity] Grandmothers do more than bake cookies

Watching “Minari,” a largely autobiographical film by Korean American director Lee Isaac Chung, I recalled a young family who one Sunday joined a church service of mostly Korean and Korean American college students in western Massachusetts in the late 1980s. They were an immigrant family, like the Yi family in “Minari,” and the father worked as a chick sexer, like parents Jacob and Monica in the film. It was the first time I had heard of the job, which involves determin

March 5, 2021

[Lionel Laurent] Vaccine comparison shopping lets COVID win

The scientist in charge of France’s vaccine rollout, Alain Fischer, must sometimes feel like Sisyphus forever rolling his boulder up the hill. After months of patiently working to win over a doubting public’s acceptance of the groundbreaking mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, he’s now fighting to convince French doctors to offer AstraZeneca’s more traditional shot to their patients. Resistance runs deep even as doses pile up, more data about efficacy emerges and Pres

March 5, 2021

[Nicholas Goldberg] World of vaccination haves and have-nots

In my house, we have a problem. My wife has been vaccinated; I haven’t. Am I envious? Of course I am. Resentful? Yeah, some of that too. When she came home all cheerful after her second COVID-19 vaccine shot last week, I couldn’t help feel that she had crossed safely to the other side of a giant chasm, while I remained at the edge of the cliff. Later, when she complained of a headache and some chills from the second shot, I was, perhaps, a tad less sympathetic than I could have bee

March 4, 2021